Comments on: Measureless Pleasure, Measureless Pain: Alicia Ostriker’s Men

By: Nat Sufrin

Nat Sufrin — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:51:33 +0000

Thank you for pointing me to this incredible document. I’ll check out the reissue.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:25:19 +0000

Thanks Nat–did you know Pittsburgh is reissuing her Mother/Child Papers next month?

By: Nat

Nat — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:54:49 +0000

Daisy—
Ostriker’s words and your words on hers
gave me the shivers.
Her poems are so relevant!
Much appreciation,
Nat

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 05:44:54 +0000

Thanks, Daisy, for these careful readings and appreciations. I love reading appreciations of poets and poems I have not yet really got much purchase on and this is helpful. I particularly like the spare and powerful Matisse poem. Not a single modifier, unless you want to count “primary” or “water”, but these are really part of compound nouns.

By: Emily Warn

Emily Warn — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 02:58:57 +0000

Hi Daisy,
I heard you present this at the tribute to Alicia Ostriker at AWP and am happy to happen on it again here. Thanks for finding this thread in her work and contextualizing it. Reading them, I’m struck by how conditioned the first and third poems are by the times in which they’re written, yet charged by their shifting focal points–if that makes sense. That poodle, for instance, as elegant as “a model on a runway,” lavished and pampered and strolling becomes a lens that helps us see through stark contrast the war, the woman with cancer.
Emily